SURREALIST REVOLUTION STAND C4 REGENTS PARK, LONDON SIMON C. DICKINSON LTD 5 – 9 OCTOBER 2016 58 JERMYN STREET LONDON, SW1Y 6LX +44 (0)207 493 0340 www.simondickinson.com dickinson 1. R. Magritte, ‘Je ne vois pas la [femme] cacheé dans la forêt’, from La Revolution Surréaliste, No.12, 15 Dec. 1929 MAS SON CARR INGTON TANGU Y CALDE R A P R SALE Y MAN R AY V SAGE D O MINGUEZ PICA BIA KAHL O DAL I D U CHAMP M I RO ERNST Picas so MAGRI TTE TANNING O C RNELL BRAUN ER SURREALIST REVOLUTION SIMON C. DICKINSON, LTD 58 JERMYN STREET LONDON SW1Y 6LX T. +44 (020) 7493 0340 W. www.simondickinson.com CONTENTS INTRODUCTION . .Emma W A R D THE HISTORY OF SURREALISM. Molly D ORKIN ARTISTS . A RP - W OLS FRIEZE MASTERS REGENTS PARK, LONDON 5 – 9 OCTOBER 2016 dickinson La Galerie Surréaliste, Paris, 1926 6. INTRODUCTION ‘Although the dream is a very strange phenomenon and an inexplicable mystery, far more inexplicable is the mystery and aspect our minds confer on certain objects and aspects of life.’ GIORGIO DE CHIRICO At Frieze Masters 2016 Dickinson is delighted to present Surrealist Revolution, a survey of Surrealism primarily focusing on the 20s, 30s and 40s on both sides of the Atlantic, across a variety of media. Surrealism is considered one of the most radical and inluential movements of the twentieth century. The Surrealists’ impulse to tap into the unconscious mind, and their interests in myth and primitivism, went on to shape many later movements, and the style remains inluential to this day. Originally a Paris-based phenomenon, Surrealism soon spread throughout Europe during the 1920s and on to Britain and America in the 1930s. The onslaught of World War II witnessed a further migration to America of artists, dealers and collectors who fervently supported the movement, and thus America became the hotbed of Surrealist creativity during the 1940s. Its legacy and inluence on later generations of artists is incontestable. We trust you enjoy the presentation and accompanying publication. Emma Ward Managing Director Simon C. Dickinson Ltd. THE ORIGINS OF SURREALISM Surrealism originated as a literary (ig. 1). Breton had trained in psychiatry, du Surréalisme. In addition to Breton, movement sometime in the early 1920s. It and was employed to treat shell-shocked Aragon and Soupault, the original group was an offshoot of Dada, which emerged soldiers during the War, for which he included Paul Éluard and his wife Gala in 1916 as a rebellion against popular relied on Sigmund Freud’s methods of (who subsequently married Salvador notions of artistic taste and observed psychoanalysis. Freud’s theories held Dalí), Benjamin Peret, Jacques Baron, social conventions, and was simultaneously that the truth emerges in dreams and the Robert Desnos and many others (ig. 2). anti-art and anti-bourgeois. Members subconscious, which must be analysed In addition to Freud’s theories of the of the Dada movement, and later the and interpreted. Having returned to subconscious, their philosophy drew Surrealists, believed that much of modern Paris after the War, Breton and his from the socialist writings of Karl Marx. art had fallen out of touch with the lived fellow writers Louis Aragon and Philippe In these early stages of the movement, experience, and they sought to bridge that Soupault experimented with ‘automatic Breton was reluctant to include the visual gulf. The Surrealists were also reacting writing’ in their journal Littérature. Breton arts, fearing that they did not have the against the horrors of the irst World was inspired by a 1918 essay by the poet same ability to be unplanned in the same War, and the tragedies many of them had Pierre Reverdy, in which he stated: ‘The way as written language. However, as early witnessed irst-hand. more the relationship between the two as 1921, he was beginning to associate juxtaposed realities is distant and true, the language with the poetic imagery in the The poet and author André Breton is stronger the image will be – the greater its collages of Max Ernst. Furthermore, generally considered the founder of emotional power and poetic reality.’ his opinion was changed by the advent the Surrealist movement, although the of new artistic techniques, including term “Surrealism” was irst used by Surrealism was oficially consecrated in automatic drawing (originated by André Guillaume Apollinaire as early as 1903 1924 in Paris by Breton in his Manifeste Masson, and associated with Miró and ‘En quoi consiste le Surréalisme? D’après l’étymologie, il est au réalisme ce que le surhomme est (ou serait) à l’homme: il le surpasse.’ (‘What constitutes Surrealism? According to the etymology, it is to realism what Superman is (or would be) to man: it surpasses it.’) PAUL SOUDAY 8. ‘Voici le Surréalisme et tout le monde cherche à en faire partie.’ (‘Here is Surrealism, and all the world wants to be part of it.’) TRISTAN TZARA Fig. 1: André Breton, 1924 Fig. 2: The Paris Surrealists, 1930 (L- R: Tristan Tzara, Paul Éluard, André Breton, Jean Arp, Salvador Dalí, Yves Tanguy, Max Ernst, René Crevel, Man Ray) Fig. 3: Giorgio de Chirico, Rome, 1944, photograph by Irving Penn 9. Dalí); frottage (a rubbing with chalk or pastel on an uneven surface) and FALPARSI decalcomania (engravings or prints (À MAREEL NOLL) transferred to other material). Thus, the original collective of writers soon La nature eternelle welcomed a number of painters into its Me réchauffe en ses seins circles, including Ernst, Miró, Francis L’heure et ma ritournelle Picabia, Yves Tanguy and Dalí, among Sont mes deux médecins others, united by their underlying ideas rather than by a common visual Dansez dansez dansez or literary style. The Italian Giorgio Voici le temps d’aimer de Chirico, although never oficially D’aimer sous les yeuses a member of the group, can be Comme au bord de la mer considered the father of the movement: Breton recalled being deeply inspired La chaleur envirante by an encounter with one of de Me monte jusqu’aux yeux Chirico’s metaphysical paintings in a Mon âme fulgurante Paris gallery in the early 1920s, and his S’élève jusqu’aux cieux admiration for de Chirico was shared by the other Surrealists (ig. 3). Some of these artists, including Ernst and LOUIS ARAGON Jean (or Hans) Arp, belonged to the Dada movement before they entered a Surrealist phase. The bizarre, alien landscapes and strange juxtapositions of images found in Surrealist work across all media were celebrated as revelations of an underlying truth, and of a ‘super’ reality that rose above the quotidian reality of our experiences. As the theories espoused by the Surrealists spread, satellite groups formed in other countries, among them the Belgian group established in Brussels in 1925 (ig. 4). It was to this group that René Magritte belonged, along with a number of writers and poets including E.L.T. Mesens, Paul ‘Let us not mince Nougé, Marcel Lecomte, AndréAndré Souris, Camille Goemans, Paul Colinet and words…the marvelous Marcel Mariën. is always beautiful, anything marvelous is beautiful, in fact only the marvelous is beautiful.’ ANDRÉ BRETON 10. WHAT IS SURREALISM? Although there were a number of theoretical grounds for the Surrealist movement, there was never a irm agreement among its members as to what exactly Surrealism was and was not. According to Breton’s own deinitions, written in 1924, Surrealism was ‘pure psychic automatism, by which one proposes to express, either verbally, in writing, or by any other manner, the real functioning of thought. It is the dictation of thought in the absence of all control exercised by reason, outside of all aesthetic and moral preoccupation.’ Fundamental to the movement was the primacy of contradictions, either among a collection of objects or images, or within a single work. Surrealism was often unnerving, illogical, and surprising. It was also, at least initially, largely uncommercial: Breton felt that it was the essential duty of art to expand people’s minds and imaginations, and not to simply be goods for sale. It was for this reason that Breton often did not see eye to eye with the more business-minded members of the group, such as Magritte. ‘Il ne faut jamais oublier qu’un tableau doit toujours être le LA COURBE DE TES reflet d’une sensation YEUX FAIT LE TOUR profonde et que DE MON COEUR profonde veut dire étrange et qu’étrange La courbe de tes yeux fait le tour de mo Un rond de danse et de douceur, veut dire peu connu Auréole du temps, berceau nocturne et sûr, Et si je ne sais plus tout ce que j’ai vécu ou tout à fait inconnu C’est que tes yeux ne m’ont pas toujours vu. Feuilles de jour et mousse de rosée, (‘One must never Roseaux de vent, sourires parfumés, Ailes couvrant le monde de lumière, forget that a painting Bateaux chargés du ciel et de la mer, Chasseurs des bruits et sources des couleurs, should always be the Parfums éclos d’une couvée d’aurores reflection of a profound Qui gît toujours sur la paille des astres, Comme le jour dépend de l’innocence sensation and that Le monde entier dépend de tes yeux purs Et tout mon sang coule dans leurs regards. profound means strange PAUL ÉLUARD and strange means little known or even unknown.’) ANONYMOUS 11. LA REVOLUTION SURRÉALISTE In 1924, Breton and his friends established the Bureau de Recherches Surréalistes, in order to conduct scientiic experiments that delved into the subconscious, and to share the information they found. Breton also began publishing the periodical La Revolution Surréaliste, in order to document and publish these results, and as a marketing tool to promote and disseminate the ideas of Surrealism (ig.